


the language of love

by locationist



Category: EXO (Band), Red Velvet (K-pop Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 04:24:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16381337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/locationist/pseuds/locationist
Summary: Is contrary to popular belief, not French. And sometimes, is not even a language at all.





	the language of love

China is big, but Yixing isn't tall.

Of course the country someone's from can never fully explain the person, but Joohyun finds herself thinking about this one day when she's standing across from him. The sun burns the sky a fiery orange as it descends past the cut-outs of office buildings and department stores in the blue - and its reflection in Yixing's dark irises sets his otherwise sleepy eyes aflame.

"So," Yixing starts to finish an incomplete thought. So, Yixing's from Changsha and his tongue still wraps around Korean clumsily no matter how long he's been here, no matter how deftly he can wrap it around hers. So, Yixing and Joohyun are both twenty-seven now, too old for these unbounded kinds of boundaries that they've scribbled over continuously since university. And the sun is going down. Joohyun follows the hint of pink that slips from between his parted lips to lick the dryness away.

Tongues are important. It's been this way for Joohyun since she was young and her grandparents, old-fashioned but endearingly so, sat her down every afternoon after she came home from school and taught her Mandarin for two hours. "No, no, no," her grandfather would say when she mixed up a lion and persimmon. "You have to curl your tongue to the roof of your mouth."

Joohyun's grandparents, and their grandparents, and maybe even _their_ grandparents grew up in the same small town that Joohyun grew up in, so removed from the city that it didn't even have a convenience store, and the closest one was in the next town out, thirty-five minutes by car and a whole stretch of highway away. The only chain store was the supermarket and this small joint that made Western-styled breakfast and only opened until eleven thirty every morning.

That being said, Joohyun was the only one in her primary school class whose grandparents taught her Chinese. That being said, Joohyun's never told anyone about it, not even Yixing, and she hasn't spoken a word of it aloud in so long that she's sure she would confuse her lions and persimmons if she tried.

She wonders if her grandparents would be ashamed. It could go either way, honestly, and Joohyun spent enough time convincing herself of one outcome that she couldn't really remember why she thought one would triumph over the other. Maybe they wouldn't mind at all. _City girl_ , is what her parents joke whenever she visits home now. A lot of kids in their town became city people after high school graduation.

Joohyun inhales. Smells like the smoke from the cigarettes that Yixing used to like to smoke, smells like the slight burn when she curled her hair by herself the first time without using heat protectant. _So._ She's forgetting something.

There's a hand reaching for hers. That hand is connected to a forearm, to an elbow, to a shoulder, and that shoulder is part of a man, not very tall. Yixing.

Joohyun exhales. _Ah._ Yes. She's forgetting that as the thought goes on, they must end.

  
  
  


Joohyun started university as a mathematician and ended it as a linguist. Somewhere in between comes late nights in the library studying, stealing a swig of her apartment mate's constant stock of soju in their shared refrigerator, and Zhang Yixing.

If she really examined the natural trajectory of things, Joohyun would think it made sense. The whole linguist thing. The Mandarin from her grandparents, and then the French elective, and then the Catalan one. And then walking into the counselor's office one day and walking out with a new major that her parents would yell at her over the phone for hours about. Joohyun thinks she cried herself to sleep that night.

Zhang Yixing is not a linguist. In fact, Zhang Yixing barely crossed paths with her in university that Joohyun wonders if not for the time they spent together in German, struggling not to fail, if they would have met at all.

" _Gesundheit,_ " Yixing would always say whenever Joohyun sneezed around him. For the first five weeks of the semester, before they actually had to study for the midterm, that was about as proficient as they got. It was pretty funny, and pretty charming, and it was dumb but Joohyun used to laugh to herself that she wished she could sneeze more around him, if only to hear his lackadaisical German.

Yixing was a good student, German aside, and Joohyun felt like dead weight whenever they crammed for exams together. "You're not so shabby yourself," Yixing smiled when she mentioned it, though.

Maybe that's when Joohyun fell for him. "You know," Yixing laughs every time her socked toes prod underneath his thighs when he's sitting on her sofa. "You tell me a different story every time."

"I'm a linguist," Joohyun deadpans. "Not a Lit major." And she giggles when he wraps his hand around her ankle, where she's mysteriously ticklish.

They fuck for the first time in Yixing's old apartment room when they're both juniors and haven't touched German for a good year. She's sitting on his small desk, and he's wheeled the secondhand rolly chair to do physics homework on top of his dresser.

It starts when one of them sneezes. "Gesundheit," the other person laughs. Joohyun's memory gets a little jumbled about this first part but she remembers this: Yixing turning around to face her. Rolling the chair over to her after several attempts to get the wheels going - they're old and shot. He overshoots and Joohyun can feel his breath against her knee before he can pull away.

This she also remembers: she's wearing this oversized t-shirt that goes to her knees that she usually sleeps in, but it's ridden up a little. She inhales. Yixing's looking at her and his eyes aren't so sleepy anymore.

She exhales. "Yes," she whispers, and then Yixing starts kissing up the inside of her thighs in nearly slow motion. Joohyun remembers leaning back onto her palms, not quite sure what to hold onto, before he presses three fingers against her clit over her underwear and she hears herself take a sharp breath.

"Here," he says, taking his mouth away from her inner thigh so she can even her breathing. "Hold onto me," and then he takes her hands into his and places them in his hair.

And then he pushes her shirt up to her stomach and helps her slide off her underwear, spreading her legs further so he can scoot closer. Joohyun bites back a moan and watches as he sucks a bruise into her thigh before he moves even deeper and starts to lick her clit.

Joohyun doesn't remember having a lot of coherent thoughts after that.

  
  
  


Here's the problem: they're never really dating. Joohyun doesn't realize this until she's lying next to him in bed one night during their senior year after Yixing fucked her on her hands and knees. She pulls her clothes back on and the blanket back over him before shielding herself from the cold of the night with her arms, wrapped around her sides.

There's always studying. Walking each other home. The fucking. But the closest they've gotten to eating out was when Joohyun suggested they order pizza in between one of the previously mentioned, which probably just ended with them fucking again.

The more Joohyun thinks about it, the more she thinks that they don't have to be anything. Yixing's nice, but he smokes, and Joohyun's never wanted an ashtray for a boyfriend. Yixing's nice, but he sometimes sleeps through his classes when she's over at his place and Joohyun wakes up to him banging his shin on his bed frame in an attempt to crawl out without waking her and she just laughs at him while he cusses. Yixing's nice, but Joohyun doesn't know if he'll go home after university and he said the reason why he broke up with his last girlfriend was because of the long distance. But Joohyun promised to take him to that small breakfast joint back in her hometown someday after graduation anyway, and he held her to it.

The more Joohyun thinks about it, the more she doesn't want to. That afternoon, she has an appointment at the hairdresser's and cuts her hair to her shoulders.

"Hey," Yixing says when they meet up after class to walk home. A confused look passes over his face before settling back into his sleepy neutral. "Your hair," and he reaches up to rub the fresh ends of one of the strands between his index finger and thumb.

Joohyun forgets what she was going to say. She waits until Yixing drops his arm back to his side and shoves his hands into his pockets to realize the fleeting thought won't come back. "Yeah," she says instead.

"I like it," he tells her. Joohyun wishes he would tell her something else.

Joohyun, truthfully, never really forgets. She always tells herself otherwise, but the fact of the matter is, people aren't as easy to cut off as hair.

  
  
  


"So," Yixing's saying now, and Joohyun's hair has grown back and Yixing hasn't moved back to China and they're holding onto this thing that they have like little children who can't let go of their safety blanket even after they've entered primary school.

Yixing's hand reaches hers and the palm of it is clammy. They've never went to Joohyun's hometown to try that breakfast place, but one opened up near Yixing's apartment and he went alone, once, and ordered something that Joohyun never recommended. "It's alright," Yixing shrugged afterwards and Joohyun felt mildly insulted.

For all the semantics she's studied over the years, Joohyun doesn't know how to put this feeling into words. It's like wanting the destination but none of the journey, feeling the tears of disappointment prick her eyes and sinus from trying so hard to hold them back but having them flood out in the end, anyway, and at the same time, a chorus of _what if, what if, what if_ going off in the back of her mind.

What they have isn't perfect. It's been fragmented by their work schedules and small frustrations that they hold against each other for too long and the way they never say what they mean because at least Joohyun doesn't know what she really means, doesn't know what she really wants, doesn't know if it's the years between them or something else that keeps letting him into her ridiculously cramped one-person apartment and wearing the shirts he's left at her place while she's doing her laundry.

"I guess this is where we should say goodbye."

Because Joohyun remembers.

  
  
  


Hey, Yixing, I -

Hey, Yixing, before we break up, or whatever this is -

Hey. Hi. Yixing.

Do you remember that day during senior year when I cut my hair? Yeah, we were supposed to do this then. I pretend it's because I didn't remember what I wanted to say but that's a lie. I was supposed to break up with you, or whatever. But I didn't. I don't know why I didn't. I think be both knew this wouldn't last. And yet -

Remember when I cut my hair? I was supposed to break up with you then. We were supposed to be over after university, but I don't know why we're still -

We're twenty-seven now. You don't smoke anymore, and you tend not to stay nights because you live all the way across town from me, but you drive over to see me in the first place. That means something, right? My hair's long again but I've been thinking about this thing since even before I cut it that one time and it's that -

 

 

 

It's almost completely dark out now. What's left of the sun is leaving the horizon on fire while the night douses the flames. Joohyun presses her lips together.

"Zhang Yixing," she says. She curls her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She hasn't spoken Chinese in so long that it sounds positively horrible. "Zhang Yixing," she repeats, and it sounds just as bad as the first, but Yixing's looking at her like that day when she cut her hair, like that day he rolled his chair over to her when she was sitting on his desk in that oversized t-shirt, like he has every day since they've hung out together, and Joohyun just never realized.

"Do you remember or not..." Joohyun trails off, because now she can't put anymore words into Chinese. Can't put anymore feelings into words. She presses her lips together again, thinking.

Yixing hasn't let her hand go. His palm is still clammy in hers. And yet -

"I remember," he whispers. Joohyun doesn't know if he's talking about the _Gesundheit's_ or the breakfast place or the late night study sessions or when she fell for him or he for her.

What she does know is that this, in some strange semantic twist, is their way of saying _I love you._ "Good," Joohyun chuckles. She closes her eyes and they are twenty-one, twenty-three, twenty-five, twenty-six all over again.

"Because I do, too."


End file.
